Page 90 of Reckless Liar

I walked into the living room and stopped short. When I moved out, I only asked for my essentials to be packed up. I left the furniture, the dishes, the plants. I didn’t want to look at the things that Xander and I shared, even if it was only a spoon.

The painting hung at an odd angle on the wall, the left side inches lower than the right. I walked up and set my hand against the canvas feeling the rough paint under my fingertips. I could feel Xander behind me, even without looking at him I knew how he would be standing. His hands would be pushed into his pockets, his head ducked down, an errant curl falling against his forehead.

“You kept it up,” I whispered.

“I took it down, actually. After you left, when I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, I took all your things and packed them away. There’s still a pile in your old room. But a few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and I had this urge...” he sighed, and I heard his feet on the carpet as he moved closer to me. “I hung it back up. I couldn’t stand the thought of something you loved so much being kept in that back room.”

“It’s just a painting.”

“Not to you. I don’t really understand it or honestly even like it all that much aside from her being half naked, but I knew you love it.”

I shifted the bottom of the frame until it was centered. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

“If I couldn’t have you, I thought this would be something. Like you hadn’t left.”

I still couldn’t turn around. “I didn’t leave because I wanted to. I left because you told me to.”

“I know,” he whispered. “I think about that night all the time. All the things I said to you, the words I shouldn’t have said. I regret so much about that night. I told you that you wouldn’t regret me, and you do, anyway.”

“I don’t regret you, Xan.” I whispered, shaking my head at him. “You’re making it hard for me to stay mad at you. And I really want to stay mad at you.”

“I know you do. I’m mad at you too.” He ducked his head, glancing up at me. “But I love you more.”

I took a deep breath and let my eyes meet his.

“Ana, I meant what I said. I can’t keep doing this. I know I said I could handle whatever you wanted from me. But I can’t. I want all of you. I want to be with you every day, I want to kiss you whenever I want. I can’t be here with you unless this is for real.”

“It is real, though.” My voice soft, I stepped closer to him. “I love you. I mean that, I know that now. I was too blind to see it before, the depth of it.”

He took my hand in his wrapping his fingers around them tight. His voice was a low whisper. “You know I love you. I’ve always loved you. Loving you was never our problem.”

I had known I loved him. How do I explain that loving him was so easy I could scarcely believe it was true? I thought love was supposed to be a pendulous fever running through you, yanking you around all the time. But since the night he kissed me, holding my face in his hands, it had known I always belonged to him.

“Falling in love with you was so effortless it couldn’t be real. But when you hold me, all I can think is:This is what I’ve been waiting for; now it all makes sense.”

“So, I don’t understand, I never understood why...” he gently shook his head.

I closed my eyes as I spoke. “Before, I wanted to believe in what Max and I had so badly. When I found out that all my trust in him had been in vain, I figured I couldn’t rely on my feelings or my judgment anymore. I’d been wrong about Max, who’s to say I wouldn’t be wrong about you too? That I could be wrong about how I was feeling? It was never that I didn’t trust you, Xan. I didn’t trust myself.”

“He hurt me too, Ana.” Xander brought his hand up to cup my cheek. I could feel his thumb wiping away a wayward tear.

“I wish I hadn’t put you through that.” How could I explain the difference to him? “I wish it wasn’t the case—that I could have come to you with this clean slate. I wish I could be the kind of girl who trusted right away. But I couldn’t be that girl. I was too broken then.”

“You know I can’t fix what happened with Max. I can’t fix the way we handled things. I can’t fix how you feel about him or about me.”

“Xander. I’ve had a lot of time to think about you, about us. But mostly about me. I let myself be stuck in the past. I know that. Not anymore.” I laid a hand on his cheek, willing him to stop talking. “I never needed you to fix me. I only needed you to love me.”

“I do love you,” he said, both his hands were on my cheeks, and he was pulling me to him. I let him kiss me, the feel of his lips against mine igniting something, a hunger but a bereavement as well. He needed to hear my truth, he needed to understand. I pulled away.

“You were right when you said that you couldn’t hurt me like Max.” I watched the hurt pass over his face, but I held onto his arms not letting him move. “Because the way Max hurt me, the kind of person who could be caught off guard by that kind of betrayal, isn’t me anymore. I realize now that you could never hurt me the way Max hurt me, because I’m not that girl anymore. I’m more than her now. I’m stronger. I can bear more. I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me anymore, Xander. But I needed you to know that this woman…” I tapped my chest with my finger. “She is stronger, and she can endure if she needs to. This is the woman who loves you. I’m not that scared little girl on Queenie Hill Road. This is the woman who loves you. So, if this is the woman you want to be with, then I’m ready.”

In one fluid motion he stepped forward, pulling me into his arms. When his lips possessed mine, I became irrevocably his. How could I think love should anything but this?

Epilogue

“It won’t last six weeks.” -Tracy Penrose when she heard of Ana and Xander’s relationship.

Ilearnedseveralthingsin the days following our kiss on the beach and the nights we spent together after. I learned that my parents were either perceptive or completely negligent because they never came looking for me that night or any night following. I learned that the horn in his truck was sensitive to the slightest touch and will sound if bumped by a bare back in the throes of passion. I learned that Xander moved into the bigger bedroom. He led me back there, skipping his old bedroom, his hand on my hips and his mouth on the back of my neck. I learned of the honesty in his kiss, a thunder and calm all the same with every embrace.

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